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 Sometimes I just do the show for me. I choose guests and people that I think are interesting and I appreciate what they've done. And I wanna learn more about, uh, what makes 'em tick and, and where they're, where they're going. And today's show is with the co-founders of the hit like a girl podcast, joy Rios and Robin Roberts.

And I think you're gonna enjoy that. But before we get there, I just want to, uh, remind you clip notes is live, sign up, stay current. Our fastest growing email list and we're really excited about it. Just send an email to clip notes at this week in health it.com to get signed up. Uh, also follow us on LinkedIn.

Follow me specifically on LinkedIn. Follow the show on LinkedIn. But if you're following me, you're engaging in a conversation. Every morning. I get up, I find a story, uh, during the week I find a story. I post about that story. And I started dialogue with other people from within our industry about what's going on around all, all sorts of topics.

Digital transformation, digital front door, EHR, optimization, EHR, direction, you name it, we're covering it. If it's in the news, we're talking about it. And, uh, we're getting more and more people engaging in that conversation. So please. . Choose to do that now onto the show.

Welcome to this week in Health It, where we amplify great thinking to propel Healthcare forward. My name is Bill Russell Healthcare, CIO, coach and creator of this week in Health. It I. A set of podcast videos and collaboration events dedicated to developing the next generation of health leaders. This episode and every episode since we started the C Ovid 19 series has been sponsored by Sirius Healthcare.

Now we're exiting that series, and Sirius has stepped out to be a weekly sponsor of the show through the end of the year. Special thanks to Sirius for supporting the show's efforts during the crisis and beyond. . All right. Today I am am excited. I'm going to get to do a podcast that I've wanted to do for a while, and we have Joy Rios and Robin Roberts, the co-founder of the Hit Like a Girl podcast, and co-founders also of Chirpy Bird Consulting with us.

Good morning, Joe. Joy and Robin, welcome to the show. Good morning. Good. Thank you for having us. You guys are seasoned pros. You know how this goes and, but you're on the other side of the mic. Have you been on the other side of the mic? Much. I will say that I have not in the last, yeah, in the last couple months I have been the guest on a few different podcasts and it has been just a totally different experience.

It's been a lot of fun. Yeah. You know what I found, I found it's a lot easier on this side of the podcast 'cause you just asked the question, but on the other side, you've, you have to actually answer the questions. My work's almost done. I have some questions lined up for you guys. I'm looking forward to it.

So it took us like six months of. Prep before we got started and we really, it was just a lot of Googling. It was an idea that I had after going to several conferences and just looking at, I, I don't know maybe you remember at the time, but the hashtag man kept showing up that it was all men and all men panels.

Yeah, and it was happening at conference, after conference and it really just really got under my skin at one in particular that like the topic of this particular session was on women's health and it was still all men up on the panel . And so it just became really clear to me that women are not really having, uh, they're definitely people, the people we work in healthcare, I've been working in health IT for a decade, so I know very clearly how much women contribute and work that they do to make organizations run.

They're just not necessarily given. Stage or the outlet, or you know, like the stand, like they're not necessarily given the voice when somebody asks for an opinion or to be the authority. It's typically coming from, from men. And so for me, when I saw that it was even on women's issues, that men were the ones being asked to be the authority, I just, I put my foot down.

I was like, , there's some, there's gotta be something. If I can't wait for somebody else to do something, I'm gonna do it. And I didn't know how I was gonna do it, but I've been working with Robin already for about three years and we were looking for a change in our career and I just said, like it or not, you're coming with me, we're doing this thing

So I, I'm gonna come back to the podcast, but you guys also started, uh, chirp Bird Consulting together as well. So you guys work together in the consulting world. Yeah, so we were actually at, we were actually working for a international pathology lab doing health IT consulting for that laboratory. And I got to be the director of Product.

Joy was the head of training and I was actually, and she was a published author. I was actually with her the first day in the field when she came to work and, and I was like, oh geez, who is this lady? What is she gonna be like? So we worked together doing that and helping run a team of several dozen people that were traveling the nation, helping people with health IT policy value-based care at the time, quality measures, the transition to mips, things like this.

And so that's where we met each other to begin with, I. And so by the time we knew each other for a while, and she is, Hey, we should do a podcast. I had some life going on. A lot of it really? With a sick child. And I was like, I, I distinctly remember being upstairs. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And hanging up the phone like, all right.

I, I have no idea what that means, but here we go. So Joy's constantly throwing ideas at you. It sounds like She's constantly throwing ideas, and every now and then, you're just like, okay, one of these will stick, but I, I don't have time for this one right now. Yeah, at the time when it came up, yes. And now the Rose roles are probably a little bit reversed and Joy's, we're trying to do this thing over here, so if you could stop coming up with other stuff, that would be great.

there's no shortage of things to do around here, bill. No, there isn't. I'm gonna ask you about why podcasting and what you've learned, but I, I want, I want to, I wanna give people the mission 'cause I love the mission at Hit Like A Girl Pod. Our mission is pretty simple. We wanna highlight women who are making major contributions to.

The healthcare technology and the intersection of health it, and then amplify them so they can even, so they can, maybe this is typo on my part so they can be even, so there can even be more good in the world, but we want women to feel supported, uplifted, recognized, appreciated, and rewarded. Their professional con contributions, and if we happen to fix US healthcare system while doing it even better, I, I love that mission statement and yours is a lot longer than mine, but, but you're really tackling a, a significant, uh, challenge.

So how are we doing? What are, when you started this, you just described the whole thing of mans, I remember the health conference just got hammered that one year. Yeah. 'cause there's so many of them in, in uh, defense of them the following year they compensated in the other direction. 'cause I was actually on one of the panels that they canceled 'cause they said, Hey, there's no female representation.

We're canceling this panel. And yeah, well I remember happened because they asked Joy to consult with them because it came out in one of our episodes and I think it was in a blog too, that Joy mentioned that this was the event. That was really the, the impetus or the catalyst for what we're doing today.

And so they asked her for input the following year on what they could do. I do really appreciate it. I don't feel like I'm like that much of a, somebody, like a noise maker, but I definitely wasn't quiet about it. I felt like he'd quiet and so , so I really do acknowledge them. They reached out and asked for us to consult with them on like how they could do better.

I'm sorry that it affected you and your panel. No. No, not at all. Not at all. Actually, when they called me and said, Hey, we're, we're not gonna do that panel 'cause it's all men. I was like, you know, so here's the challenge with that, to be honest with you. 'cause we did get together and we said, okay, should we get a, should we just scrap the panel or should we go find a woman?

So how do you ask a woman and say, look, we need a female representation on the panel. It was actually a weird conversation where we were like, no, let's just scrap the panel. Don't call. One of my friends and say, look, we just need a female on the panel. Can you come on the panel? I know a very, I have a lot of people I could call who are very qualified, well versed all, but it would've felt weird at that moment to call and say, Hey, can you be on our panel?

My response is, I think we all gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable, like even just making a direct ask like that. And there's a couple things to keep in mind because some people. We'll say, oh, we'll get a female on the panel, but she'll be the moderator. And so then she's not necessarily somebody who's the authority in giving and sharing her knowledge.

She's just somebody who's asking the the men. And that can be a little bit, not reflect very well, but you, but they also don't necessarily wanna be a token. You're right. It is difficult. And I think that's what we're bringing up, is just there's a need for culture change all around and it doesn't come easy.

It is is difficult by nature and like the only way to change it, I think is just by is incrementally and facing it and be like, oh, and even being acknowledging or being aware that it is an issue to begin with is literally step one. So a hundred percent of your guests are female on Hit Like A Girl podcast.

That would make sense, right? Yes, correct. What's interesting, so, and Joy, you can push back, you can be loud if you want to, but we set out as a goal to have 30% of our guests on our show be female representation. Do you know, that's actually hard. I, I, I don't know why it's hard, but it's hard. First of all, we do a lot of shows.

We do three shows a week. And generally speaking, there's a handful of things that happen. One is a lot of times I get pushback of, I, I don't know what I would talk about. So there's women that don't feel like they have a voice yet. Like they, they don't know what they're, they would talk about and I'm sitting there going are, and I have to convince 'em.

I'm like, are you kidding? You're incredibly accomplished what you're doing in this area. So there's that aspect of it. The second is during C-O-V-I-D, I went out there and started doing field reports. So it's, uh, CIOs or CTOs of organizations. Hey, how are you handling covid? And so we did that every day, five days a week for about two months.

This year I got way outta whack because all I was doing was interviewing the CIOs and CTOs for these organizations. But the number ended up being like 10% if, if that, that were actually female representations of executives within health IT, that were running those major health systems. And so there's a representation problem and then there's a voice problem.

Is that what you're finding still? I. So one, we've heard the feedback that women haven't felt comfortable saying yes like that. Like a lot of conferences will say, Hey, we asked a bunch of women to be a speaker, and they actually turned us down. And I think that's also representative of the culture. If you don't.

See something as something that's regular, then you feel like, Hey, I'm the outcast. I'm somebody who's gonna be different, and do I feel comfortable having that level of attention? It is. It's really uncomfortable. So I can imagine if you don't see any very many examples of others doing it, it makes it.

More, you have to be that much more courageous or brave to be the one who decides to do it. So I think that might be part of it where people are like, Hey, you don't see the representation. So it's hard to say yes. Not to say that they wouldn't feel comfortable or have something meaningful to say, or it's just a matter of, Hey, I'm alone up here.

I don't necessarily want that level of attention. Robin, what would you add to that? No, we, we've heard this from people, especially I think earlier on in the first year. There's a little bit of imposter syndrome, uh, but we've also run into people Bill that don't have just the same mindful commitment to even make the ask.

We had a guest tell us that someone came to them and said, how could I have more female representation on my board? We were talking about this on the golf course. We asked some guys and.

A woman out on the golf course on Saturday with you in healthcare, that's gonna be a board member, so you should look somewhere else other than the golf course was her advice. But I think two things normalizing it, like Joyce said, but also the thing that I, I think there's more of an inclination for women to these tell storytellers and when you can run a thread through that narrative and translate it for an audience, I think they do a really brilliant job of bringing vivid imagery.

So what's going on in an industry, what's going on, especially for patients and others, and how this impacts people and communities and families. And so I think they have really something special to offer, but I applaud your mindfulness towards it to begin with Bill. But you gotta ask. If you don't ask, you don't get.

And I think we're seeing more and more women subscribe to what my Nana told me, which is say yes, and then figure out the rest when someone gives you an opportunity. You take it, take it, and you go with it. And so I think they, I think everyone has something to offer. So what are people gonna find on your podcast?

So you've been interviewing women for a while. Share some of the stories, the surprising moments, the episode that sticks in your head. The person that just, yeah. After they get telling their story, you were like, man, that is, that really moved me personally, and I, I think it moved our audience. I actually, I, I'd love to hear from both of you on that.

I'll go first. I. One of our season two guests, her name is Dr. Uche Blackstock, and she was working in emergency medicine, I wanna say New York City. She still does, but she had started her own company around. Diversity and inclusion. And so she talked to us a lot about just disparities in healthcare in particular, and just within medicine and other areas of just how it shows up in life.

And these days, especially during the time of Covid, she shows up. She's a regular guest on.

Talk to us at the beginning stage, like day one of, Hey, I'm about to start this new business. And now she is like an authority in nationally, uh, on the topic. And so it's been really cool to just know that we had the opportunity when we did to give this woman, uh, a platform and um, I'm not saying it's because of us, because she's certainly very capable, but it was definitely memorable for me that we had the opportunity to, to talk with her.

Yeah, I agree. She has an amazing background in, is being a Harvard trained physician, her sister as well. And her mother was a surgeon too, a great guest for me. I think Danielle Collins, uh, showed up with us. She started a foundation about vr, uh, in surgical for surgical use, virtual reality for patients and for physicians for both training and making a patient more comfortable.

She. A, a brain bleed that had another complication. It has a much more sophisticated name, but they talked about how she came in, the doc put the headset on her and walked through the procedure he was about to do in the middle of her brain, and she ended up having a tremendous outcome. But we sat there and talked about the utility in medicine and in healthcare and therapy for other reasons.

And for me at the time, our son had just recently passed away and she. Brought to the table and the relatability of what she was talking about. Even though it was apples to oranges, we literally ended up in person and there wasn't, there were a lot of people in the room, the PR people, and it, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

It was just, it was a really memorable experience to hear her talk about that and the profound impact it had on her to start a nonprofit to support people using VR and medicine.

And I'm sorry to hear about your son. I, it's, it, it, it, but it is ama That's the reason we're in this industry. We get to have help people at their most vulnerable moment. And, and sometimes that sounds cliche, but, but it keeps drawing us back if we're really honest with ourselves. It's, I, I don't know about you guys, but I worked outside of healthcare or a majority of my career and I really couldn't get excited about helping Anheuser-Busch sell more beer.

Oh, we made 'em more efficient. They made more beer and more money. But at the end of the day, when you can have an impact on people's stories and their lives and their ability to connect, uh, and some of the stories we've heard on our show just of, especially during covid of bringing families together 'cause we separated them, we created this isolation for good reason, for obviously for health reasons, but then bringing them back together so that uh, people.

Participate in the entire experience, uh, was really kind of memorable. Talk to me a little bit about, so this is this week in health it, you talk about at the end of your mission, you talk about if we happen to fix US healthcare system while doing it even better. What's broken? What do you think is broken at this point?

And let's not focus on the reason I start with health. It let's not focus on the payment models and all those things and whatnot. Let's try to focus on the technology aspects of it. What are we having challenges with today that you two feel are, are top of mind? Robin, you take this one, you go first. . Oh my gosh.

So I think if I think about healthcare, at the end of the day, my fundamental belief is that it's between a physician and a patient. And there is so much in the way of that. You mentioned a couple things and we won't go into those weeds, bill, because we can do that for hours. That's what we do in our day job.

If I think about healthcare in those terms, it should really be a hub and spoke. And that hub is the patient, their family, their care partners for whatever's going on, whether it's an ear infection for a child, a cancer diagnosis for an alien adult, c. I think one of our guests said it best in a recording a few weeks ago that healthcare wasn't really designed in that way, and now here we are decades and decades later, living in a world where literally you can have groceries or jump rope delivered to your door in hours, and people expect.

Relationship with a physician or healthcare, and perhaps Covid has done more for that in the last several months to really transpire and innovate than we've done in years. But to me, I feel like we can't put the patient at the center enough. And if I think about health it in particular. My personal kind of rub for me is when someone has a solution for something and doesn't really understand the problem.

And we see a lot of that people show up and we hear about a lot from guests and VC people and others, uh, in healthcare that we don't have the patient at the center. You got a lot of people with a lot of great solutions, but they don't know what the problem is that they're solving or they don't understand it well enough to even get to market.

Yeah, so those are my two fundamental challenges and problems with healthcare and it's brokenness. Can I bounce off that a little bit? First of all, the patient at the center, I heard a great story yesterday. I was moderating something and, and somebody said, Hey, why can I, why can I schedule my, uh, hair salon?

Via my digital app show up, not have to wait in all covid, but I still can't do that with my doctor. And the quick answer to that is we are not incent or designed still around the customer, around the consumer or around the the patient. At this point we still have waiting rooms and the reason you have waiting rooms is 'cause we value the physician's time.

More than we value the, the patient's time. I mean, it, it, are we gonna see that change? And by the way, the second aspect of this is when you look at startups, there's a lot of startups that really understand the consumer, and that's what they're trying to bring to us. And then they go to health systems and we look at 'em and go, yeah, we're consumer centric.

And they come to us with a great solution and we go, yeah, I don't even know what to do with that because we're just not ready and we're not there. Is that what you're finding out in the market?

Yeah, I think so. And it's not, healthcare wasn't designed, it just happens. And sometimes I feel like we keep putting band-aids on it and keep, we built this, we made this. It wasn't designed for that. But yeah, I think we hear that feedback from a lot of our guests that couldn't have probably been more apparent to me than in a discussion we had with an E, an E-M-R-C-E-O.

And when they told us their wish about what they would fix, it was interoperability. I thought, Lord, the detailed technical framework for that to occur is in hand, it's well within your reach and you still won't fix it. So that is like a cop out answer to bring to us. But the, yeah, I, I, I think you do see that with people large and small in your example about the vendor showing up that does have a great solution and wants to give, bring it to somebody, or think there's value for a payer.

For the physician, for the plan, um, or excuse me, for what's going on there, and it's just, it's shut down because it doesn't have a place, or it doesn't have a place. Now we see, we hear a lot about that joy. What, what about you? What would you fix in the technology health IT space in healthcare? Gosh, to harp on the access of data, not only just the access.

People to get that they need, but to have their information, follow them around in a.

And when I hear about people who are able to get information for their pet from their vet veterinary clinic, uh, in within minutes without a fax machine, without any sort of issues, it just seems sad that we've done a better job to make sure that our animals medical records are more available than peoples, and making sure that people have the right information at the right time.

For the right people and so that they can make the right decisions and basically do what's right for the patient. I feel like that is something that we're still miles away from, but given the amount of technology that we have out there and available to us, it just feels like, I don't know what is standing on our way from actually doing it.

It's complicated. It's basically where we come from where we're just like, oh my God, this is this tangled mess that we're trying to. Untangle and un, and it's just as much as we learn, there's more to learn and you realize it just doesn't get easier. And so what we ask all of our guests, if they could solve any problem and take away the challenges, what would they solve for?

And so it's been really fascinating to hear everybody's answers from that, but I would say most recently is something that Robin touched on instead of looking to the future. If I could solve something in the future, how amazing would it be to be able to have a time machine and go back in time and not be having to deal with some of the unintended consequences of laws and policies that we put in place decades ago that, you know, we didn't, and.

Of course, nobody had a crystal ball. We didn't know what technology was gonna look like and how everything was gonna unfold, but how amazing it would be if I could snap my fingers. It'd be nice to be able to go back in time too and just be like, all right, let's look at the big picture here and how really are our decisions now gonna affect generations of people in the.

Yeah. That's fascinating. I, I, I assume you're referring to meaningful use. If you're gonna, if you're going to give away that much money to EHR providers and health systems, you should mandate as here's the money. And oh, by the way, there needs to be a mechanism for patients to get access to that data. And they've had it in there as an afterthought like, and the EHR providers essentially said, oh, it's too hard to do.

Mm-Hmm. , which is the silliest thing in history. 'cause at that point in time, we could get. Package delivery from UPS, we could get stuff outta Amazon. We get, so we knew full well how to do it. Have you ever called anyone out on the show? Like they, they answered a question and you just wanna jump outta your seat and go What the, no.

So Robin was just touching on, she, she, if she could go back in time. There's one guest in particular that we played nice and did not do that. And I know that she's, it brought, it's been brought up several times. Like, oh, I. But it's hard because you wanna be nice and welcoming to the guests. It's not like we're here to fight

It's like bringing somebody into your house for tea and then saying, oh, you're wrong. What is, yeah, you just, yeah, it's hard. It wasn't really, I, I wouldn't say that we were played nice. I don't think it's really congruent with the mission, that latter piece that you called out about healthcare afterwards.

There's even, I, I think we do. The one thing you do in a podcast, now that we've been doing this two years, we get a lot of influx of requests and joy and I bounce off of each other, pushing back about who we do and don't wanna talk to. I think more so now than we did initially. Joy, would you agree with that?

Yeah. And I'll she'll push back on a point to say. This just doesn't really drive with us and where we're trying to go, this isn't pay to play sort of stuff, or we just don't agree with this organization's mission, or we look at their leadership or things that have come out of it. And so we're really, I think, doing a better job aligning in podcasts with what we hope to see in the marketplace.

And I would add, there's one, one episode recently where, okay, so we also like to think, hey, we're dealing with a 5,000 piece puzzle here and trying to understand everybody's piece a little bit better to see how they can connect. And hopefully that'll help all of us in the end. But there's some people's pieces that like, Ooh, your piece is ugly.

Like that's one of the ugly underbelly parts of healthcare that to.

But it's still important is that we wanna understand how the system works and how each of us are making contributions that even from that place, how are you making it better? It's important to.

I'm flipping right now through all my episodes, and I was gonna say, here's some female guests that I've had on my show that have been fantastic. But to be honest with you, I'm looking at all of 'em, and you could pick any one of 'em and I think I'd give a strong recommendation to. By that is not true of all the guys that are on this page.

But anyway, but I, seriously, I'm looking at it. We've had some great guests on, on this show. Karina Edwards is, uh, CEO of a startup right now. She's doing fantastic. Some of the CIOs. Who are currently in their roles are doing fantastic. Nancy Ham, who's the CEO? I think it's WebPT is fantastic. We, we've had some phenomenal guests, but let, let's do a little behind the scenes on podcasting.

You get a lot of requests, I get a lot of requests. How do you make the decision of who, who gets to be on the show and who doesn't get to be on the show?

It's a good question. At first we were pretty open 'cause we just were like, all right, let's talk to just anybody. But we have a form that people go through and so we make sure, but even before we invite them, now we're like, all right, we wanna know your bio. We wanna know what company you work for. We wanna know conversations.

Had over and over again, then it tends to put somebody lower on the list. 'cause we do wanna be, it's not necessarily that the person in particular, but the topic that they are gonna bring to the table. Ultimately, we wanna have a better understanding of the system in general. And so if they can help us understand it, like, for example, um, in our upcoming season, we have.

A woman who is helping us understand airlifting like the medical helicopters. And I was like, okay. She absolutely, like we wanna hear. That's something I don't know very much about. It'll be an interesting conversation or hearing from a woman, EMT slash fire, you know, firefighter. I'm like, oh, I wanna know what her life is like.

That's a side that I've never heard about. So right now we're a little bit. Robin, feel free to add, but being a little bit more judicious on, do you pursue them or do you wait until they pursue you? I'd say it's an, it's a combination of both nails, a lot of PR companies that like to send people our way.

We have a lot of people that just go fill out the form. Um, on our page we have a community link and hit like a girl pod.com, uh, under community where people can be part of our Slack community with listeners and guests. And so people there know, typically they can go fill something out if they or someone they know want to, to find it out.

I'd say it's a healthy mix. And then each season, joy and I usually make. A wish of people and us or one of our team members reaches out to say, Hey, we're really like, we have a health it crush on you. Would you come talk to us about A or C? We really have a Wednesday. And so there are people. Personally target and I'm like, Ooh, I'd love to know more about her world and bring this to our listeners.

And we don't always get our way, but the, yeah, so we mix of all of it. But that is the secret of podcasting, right? So you have a platform now that you can invite people on to learn about whatever topic you wanna learn about. And that's the fascinating thing to me. 'cause I'll, I'll call people up and I'll go, uh, will you

Please come on my show I'd like, and they look at it and they go, yeah, I would love to go on your show. I'm like, I can't believe I got this person to come on my show. Yeah. And gimme like 45 minutes of free consulting on, now I'm sharing it with everybody, but, but essentially I, I get to learn about behavioral economics.

I get to learn about different technologies, service oriented architect, you name it, we can explore it. It's a phenomenal. I want, I wanted to hit on your Slack channel and mentoring and those kind of things. You guys obviously as your mission. The podcast is part of it, the company's part of it, but you also, uh, have the Slack channel and really promote mentoring.

Talk a little bit about that and how that evolved and where that's going. So I'll tackle that. We, that kind of came out of the first part of Covid. It really was just, all right, time to level, set. The world is a different place. We're not gonna go back to normal. What is the new normal that we would like to see?

And as I hit on earlier, it's really a bit of a culture shift. And, and that's not something that happens overnight. And so I thought, what are ways that we can actually really show support for people and encourage that in each other? And so I think that women have been taught that there is a limited number of seats at the table for us.

To your point about the tokenism, oh, there's only room for one woman. And that means that we, that among us women, we then have to fight for. Seek. And culturally, I just feel like how can we encourage each other? How can it be that one of our success is actually the rest of our success? How can we just lift each other up so that we're not necessarily competing with one another?

As much, but instead just like offering each other words of encouragement or congratulations or virtual high fives. And so we've created a private Slack community that women from all walks of life really are invited to be part of. And in there our intention is to just be there for each other. And so we've seen folks that are like renegotiating their positions and asking for advice that are looking for some, um.

Help on their LinkedIn profile or updating their resume or what, just asking for general feedback in and creating the connections through networking, since we're no longer really able to be with each other in person, it's like, how can we be there with and for each other virtually? And yeah, that's, we're, we're just getting started, but essentially that's what we're after.

Yeah. And you guys done in the way of mentoring, do you have a mentoring channel or, or a way of helping people to find mentors or anything to that effect? We started that. That's really our, yeah, go for it. . I was just gonna say, I think that's really a next step. We started there and we found that more people wanted to just have the more casual interaction on Slack.

We have seen people there asking for mentorship. We also started these kind of mini pods, uh, within Slack to tackle individual topics, and that seemed to get a lot more traction that you could have this one person who's the expert. Show up and mentor women on a topic that they were interested in, whether it was marketing or something in EmTech or whatever it may be.

And we're proud to say that even two weeks ago, we got our first male Slack participant, and so we were talking about it. But yeah, the community is open to anyone and. So we have seen people there asking for mentorship, but it's one of the great pieces of advice that I think we've heard from a lot of the guests is that they are mentoring other women or multiple people at a time, or being what it's like to be a mentee and when to move on or find a new mentor to help do exactly what we're trying to do now, virtually.

Yeah, and I think that one thing that showed up was, uh, one of our guests really put, she put it really well. She's just, it's important one to not only be a mentor for other folks, but also to be mented and think of it as your own like personal board of directors of having people that you can reach out to for different topics.

Hey, we're, again, we're not all the expert in anything, but it's important for us to have the right connection so that when we do need support in a, we have a network of people that we can rely on and, and reach out to. You know, know what I love about this conversation. You guys saw a need. You stepped into it.

You stepped into it with the podcast. Then you saw another need. You stepped into it with the Slack channel or even the, the mentoring channel, and then you adjusted. That's what we do, right? We we're customer centric. We say, is this working? Is it not working? All right, we'll do something different. We'll figure it out.

Yeah. Pivot, . . So how can people follow you, find you, what's the best way? Joy, we'll start with you. How can people follow and find you? Sure. Personally, I am on Twitter at Ask Joy Rios. I definitely am involved in a lot of Twitter chats on a regular basis. If you wanna see pictures of me and my dog, I'm over on Instagram at Joy Res.

And then, um.

Absolutely Robin. Uh, similarly pretty present on Twitter at r Roberts eHealth. I'm on LinkedIn under Robin Roberts. It's Robin with an I and yeah, otherwise in on LinkedIn you can find my email information there or you can come hunt me down at a softball field with my girls on the weekend somewhere in the Greater Charlotte area.

I. Yes, I've been there. Now all my kids are in college or beyond, but that's a, that's a fun time. Oh, the podcast, that's what we forgot. How can people find the podcast? So podcast is, um, hit like a girl pod and basically any social media channel. And same with the website. It's hit like a girl pod.com and then our, I'll add our consulting, iSpy Bird Inc.

So INC com. What specifically do you do with Chirpy Bird Inc. So we help people with digital health, uh, the merit based Incentive payment System, also known as mips. We help people with workflow. We do security risk assessments, and it's not just us. We have a whole team across the country ready to help physician offices.

Fantastic. Uh, thank you again for taking the time to come on the show. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I'm looking forward to looking forward to continuing to follow your journey as you continue down this road. Thanks again for your time. Thank you. This was great. That's all for this week. Don't forget to sign up for our clip notes.

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